Spellirium Alpha Available, Go Play Now!

There are games where the idea of them you carry in your head is richer and deeper than the thing that’s actually released. Take Bookworm Adventures, which was certainly fun but not, by any stretch of the imagination, the adventure/RPG word game it was described as. Spellirium is based on the idea of what Bookworm Adventures could have been, taking the Boggle-style word creation game and expanding the adventure elements, classic point & click style, in all directions.

It’s still in an early alpha stage, though, with the game incomplete in many different ways. That doesn’t mean you can’t check it out, just that for the moment you’ll be missing both the final third of the game plus 99% of the audio. Spellirium launched a funding campaign this week with full alpha access in order to fund the completion of its missing bits, and while the game will be completed no matter what, more backers means better polish. Maybe if we’re really lucky the minute-long song over the gameplay section of the pitch video will get expanded, because it’s a delightfully upbeat dark bastard of a tune.